daily me

sunday reflections

stones on the beach

until yesterday i was on block island... we were supposed to return today, but a big nor-easter was on its way and ferry service was expected to be canceled sunday, monday, and, possibly, tuesday... so we drove back last night...

i am happy to be home... for much of our stay on the island i was battling depression (unusual for me) and feeling very anxious... because of an upcoming board meeting for the cemetery i work at and, probably, because of the general anxiety so many of us are feeling because of the current political situation, which seems to get worse every day...

my mother in law said she was ready to go frequently while we were there (she's 94, in pretty good health), in part because she can't stand to watch as the country is being destroyed from within...

i was thinking about the idea of the "country being destroyed"... it is how i feel... but as i thought about it, it's not so much being destroyed as being transformed into something else that a significant minority (or so i believe) want it to be... i am angry...i don't believe in what they want it to be... i am appalled by what they want it to be... i am appalled by the hatred that is being churned up... but, i acknowledge, there is no cosmic law that says any particular nation and governmental system should persist through all time... history is very clear on that issue... they don't... ever... am i unfortunate enough to be living my "golden years" at the moment of the collapse of my country and governmental system?... i have a bad feeling about this...

decades ago, when i was in grade school?... middle school?... whatever grade i would have been studying american history... i had a teacher who told us america was a nation in decline... i remember how unsettling that was...

at least a decade ago i became convinced that the shift in demographics would eventually make white americans a minority, and the realization of that would cause a white patriarchal backlash... a decade ago i thought it could be bad...

my trans feminine experience on block island was interesting... i had coffee and breakfast every day in a cafe where my order was taken by a trans woman, and where the proprietor flies the lbgtq+ flag and is, i think, herself gay... that is to say... they are my peeps!... i got no comments on how i was presenting... my femininity is of the "feminine mystique" sort... i love dresses, skirts, colored nails and lipstick... everything that goes with being a girly girl or womanly woman...

I... LOVE... THE... MYSTIQUE!...

i realize that too many women, especially in the past, had few options other than to channel the mystique... just as i spent most of my life feeling there was little alternative to channeling societal ideas of masculinity...

... what a revelation when i started to present femininely!... i came home to a true self that had, as i think back about it, been repressed my entire life...

maria popova wrote about the three things that make for a good life...

she wrote...

There is a peace that comes from this, solid as bedrock and soft as owl down, which renders life truer and therefore more alive. Such authenticity of aliveness, such fidelity to the tessellated wholeness of our personhood, may be the crux of what we call "the good life."

this has absolutely been my experience from this new self i have arrived at... i find myself engaging with the world more happily and confidently than ever before... i love this womanly me without hesitation... and the response i have gotten to it from the people around me has been almost entirely love and acceptance... family, friends and strangers alike...

leading up to the election, and especially after the election, i wondered if i was going to have to repress my feminine again... i became afraid... i am still afraid... but i believe being this authentic self, unapologetically, as a friend put it, is my best response to what is going on... if it gets me in trouble... it will, as john lewis said, be good trouble... and my experience of being unapologetically me is that people love it...

yesterday, when i drove into town on block island to have my breakfast, i carried two stones i had picked up on the beach during a walk... we have been picking up stones and bringing them back to the cottage and home with us for years... we have so many stones... i feel like we could seriously channel the episode where lucy and ricky are trying to haul an airstream trailer loaded with all kinds of stones and other heavy memorabilia gathered during their cross country trip over the rocky mountains...

i kept these stones on the dining room table where i could look at them every day... they gave me a lot of pleasure... they were beautiful as a pair... i have been thinking for some time that i should treat these stones as gifts or as borrowed... as gifts, i can carry them back home with me and enjoy them, and then i should gift them to another who would find them beautiful as well... and instruct them to eventually let them go to someone else... gifts, lewis hyde observed in the gift have to keep moving or they loose their power...

i have so many stones that need to be kept moving... i decide to treat these two as borrowed from the beach and the sea... i resolved i would return them when we were ready to go... and i did...

the feeling of that was amazing... i was sad to set them down on the beach within reach of the waves... but i felt myself in relationship with nature, the sea, the beach, by doing so... connected... intwined...

everything we are is borrowed from the cosmos... we make use of atoms and molecules and the materials of life for our brief existence... all is returned eventually, whether we wish it to be or not... ownership is an illusion... we don't own anything... we only borrow and steward for a period of time... acknowledging that changes our being...